a bleeding purple utah jazz blog

Some players say the right things. Some never learn (Random Weekend Post #2)

As everyone knows by now, Deron was on “Inside the NBA” this past Thursday and admitted for the first time that Carlos’ 2009 [insert city] radio lovefest tour did indeed create tension in the locker room during the summer and early on in the season. Whether you want to believe Deron when he says that locker room problems no longer exist is up to you, but I for one won’t be convinced until it starts showing on the court, i.e. the Jazz stop collapsing, or worse, not even bothering to show up, against bad/good/sucky/bottom-feeding teams.

Anyway, I couldn’t but roll my eyes when I heard Boozer calling Dwight Howard “his closest friend in the NBA” and talking about how much he’d love to play with Superman:

“You got that big fella down there on defense because he covers up a lot of mistakes for you when he’s as active as he is. Everybody in the league would like to be on the same team as Superman.” (desnews)

Now, the quote in and of itself isn’t that bad–I can see it having been a leading question type of situation–but you would think that Boozer would have learned his lesson by now. Apparently not.

One other huge problem I’ve had with him over the past six months is all the times he kept talking about how he’s a/the starter while calling Sap a “three,” “diamond in the rough,” bench player, etc. What particularly vexed/vexes me about Boozer saying this is that at the same time, other Jazzmen (CJ, AK, Sap) are saying that they would do whatever’s best for the team, that their focus is on winning–you know, the right things to say.

Add Ronnie Price and Korver, who both recently came back from injury, to that list:

“The guys who are playing well should be on the floor,” said the backup guard…”If we’re winning games, that’s the way it should be. The key is to win games, that’s it.” Price continued, saying that it’s the coaches’ job to “make the right decision” on figuring out the PT and that it’s the players’ job “to play when our name gets called.”

“Everyone’s priority here–none should be worried about playing time if we’re winning,” he said.

“We’ve got a lot of guys playing really well,” Korver said. “I told coach I’ve got to earn whatever time I get and that’s fine. I understand I’ll probably play a little bit here and there to start off. I’ll try to play well and earn some more time.”

“We’ve got a little streak going now,” Korver added. “We’re playing good basketball. I’m not trying to come in and get my time and hurt whatever the team is doing. We’ve got to win. Whatever I can do to help, that’s what I want to do.”

I was therefore quite amused when Boozer said today [after an extremely disgusted Jerry yanked the entire starting lineup with six minutes to go in the third], “As a coach, you’ve got to do what’s best for the team.”

Funny how his tune changes when it’s not his personal starting status/minutes being threatened…